It is known in the integrated circuit industry that build up of static charge may lead to development of extremely high voltage near input of an integrated circuit. Electrostatic discharge (ESD) refers to the phenomenon of an electrical discharge of high current over a short duration where the current results from a buildup of static charge on or near the integrated circuit package. ESD is a serious problem for semiconductor devices since it has the potential to destroy the entire integrated circuit. It is important to provide a full-chip method of protection against such damage. The principal difficulty for designers is to make a protection device which would be able to protect the integrated circuit without interfering with nominal chip functionality.
A well-known protection method incorporated for protecting devices is a clamp circuit that connects to the power supply rails and distinguishes the ESD event from electronic signals propagating during normal applications. Distinguishing the ESD event from nominal signals is done by a filter with an RC time constant. However, due to this approach to signal differentiation, rapid rise times occurring during integrated circuit power up are close to the magnitude of rise times of an ESD event. Undesirable triggering of the protection clamping circuit may occur either due to rapid power-on conditions or during high current consumption, such as occurs with simultaneously switching outputs (SSO).
With reference to FIG. 1, a series configuration of a trigger capacitor 115 and a trigger resistor 120 connects between a power supply terminal 105 and ground 110 in a prior art ESD protection circuit 100. An ESD inverter 130 and a trigger latch 140 each connect between the power supply terminal 105 and ground 110. An ESD trigger line 125 connects between a series connection node (between the trigger capacitor 115 and the trigger resistor 120) and an input of the ESD inverter 130. A trigger line 135 connects between an output of the ESD inverter 130 and an input of the trigger latch 140. An ESD shunt device 145 connects between the power supply terminal 105 and ground 110. An ESD shunt trigger line 150 connects between an output of the trigger latch 140 and an input of the ESD shunt device 145.
The ESD protection circuit 100 uses an RC time constant to trigger the ESD shunt device 145, but uses the trigger latch 140 to maintain a triggered state of the ESD shunt device 145. Separating the ESD trigger elements (i.e., the trigger capacitor 115, the trigger resistor 120, and the ESD inverter 130) from an element sustaining the ESD trigger state (i.e., the trigger latch 140), means an RC time constant for triggering can be reduced by a factor of 100. Reduction of an RC time constant helps to eliminate risk of an accidental trigger during a rapid (on the order of hundreds of nanoseconds) power-on of a system. RC time constant reduction does not help in differentiating between ESD events with rise times similar to power-on events. An additional benefit of a reduction in an RC time constant is less risk of false triggering during switching, which produces noise (on an order of nanoseconds) on the power supply terminal 105 and is caused by simultaneously switching outputs (SSO).
The ESD protection circuit 100 requires additional timeout circuitry (not shown) which produces a release of the trigger latch 140 typically after a few microseconds delay. A timeout circuit is required to release the trigger latch 140 in cases where false triggering has occurred due to RLC noise generation or IR drop during SSO.
What is needed is a triggering mechanism that properly triggers ESD shunting devices yet allows a rapid power-on of a device without a particular requirement for power-on slew rates below a certain minimum. Furthermore, false triggering of the ESD devices should be avoided during SSO events. It is also desirable to have an ESD shunt triggering mechanism that is not a function of RC parasitic components and thus avoids any processing variation in these component values as well as the corresponding expense in required chip area.